Archive for the ‘Diskriminierung/Discrimination’ Category

One will recall the massive economic boycott and sanctions leveled against South Africa for the institution of apartheid there. The countries that practice Sharia’s own, centuries-older version of apartheid, denying freedom of conscience, religion, worship, and equal status and rights, should not get a pass.

“Indian Catholic jailed in the Maldives over a Bible and a rosary,” by Nirmala Carvalho for Asia News, October 7:

Mumbai (AsiaNews) – Shijo Kokkattu, an Indian Catholic from Kerala, has been languishing in a Maldives prison for more than a week because he had a Bible and a rosary at his home. Both items are banned on the archipelago.

“The lack of justice and the degree of religious intolerance” on the islands “are reflected by the actions of the Maldives government,” said Sajan K George, president of the Global Council of Indian Christians (GCIC). “This is the worst form of religious persecution. The Indian government should demand an apology for the shabby treatment inflicted on one of its citizens.”

Islam is state religion in the Maldives. There is no freedom of worship. In 2008, a constitutional amendment denied non-Muslims the right to obtain Maldivian citizenship.

Shijo, 30, has taught at Raafainu School on Raa Atoll for the past two years. Recently, whilst transferring some data from his pen drive to the school laptop, he accidentally copied Marian songs and a picture of Mother Mary into the system. Some teachers reported the matter to the police who raided his home and found a Bible and a rosary in his possession.

Shijo Kokkattu’s case shows the paradox of the Maldives, a nation that “claims to be a major tourist destination, yet arrests innocent people,” George said. “This shows its intolerance and discrimination towards non-Muslims as well as its restrictions on freedom of conscience and religion.”

“Religious freedom remains a taboo on the archipelago,” the GCIC president explained. “Muslims refuse all other forms of worship other than the one approved by the state. Doing the opposite means arrest. Kneeling, folding one’s hands or using religious symbols like crosses, candles, pictures or statues can lead to government action.”

For George, “All this is a clear violation of universal human rights. If Muslims living in non-Muslim countries can enjoy religious rights, the spirit of reciprocity should apply to countries like the Maldives and Saudi Arabia.”

In Stuttgart, Germany, last week, violent Leftist and Islamic supremacist demonstrators violently menaced anti-jihad activists – giving a sobering picture of where Germany, Europe, and the U.S. as well are headed if we don’t stand up and resolutely defend our freedom now.

Thursday afternoon I spoke in Stuttgart at the invitation of the human rights group Pax Europa. The event was well advertised, and so the thuggish Leftist/Islamic supremacist alliance mobilized and was out in full force.

About a thousand protesters from the frequently violent hard-Left Antifa group showed up, along with around 500 German riot police. “Antifa” stands for “Anti-fascism,” but if any fascism was on display, it was from the “anti-fascists,” who did their best to destroy the Pax Europa event. They were menacing people, starting fights, banging drums, blowing whistles, and chanting Leftist and Communist agitprop slogans. One young man from Antifa came up to me as I was standing right in front of a line of German police and said, “You’re lucky there are so many police here today.” He was not expressing solidarity.

Pax Europa had planned a full program featuring Middle Eastern Christian musicians, a Coptic Christian activist, and others, so as to highlight the hollowness of the Islamic supremacist narrative of Muslim victimhood and anti-jihadist racism. But the police ordered the Pax Europa organizers to drastically reduce the scope of their event. Everyone was restricted to ten minutes only. Several participants opted not to appear, in light of the manifest danger. Antifa people were attacking supporters of Pax Europa. I saw several individuals being chased by rabid Leftist gangs. At least one man went to the hospital.

The police used loudspeakers to call on Antifa twice to disperse, as Pax Europa had lawfully reserved the space for their event. The Antifa people responded only by moving forward, chanting slogans, banging their drums, and holding aloft the usual Leftist kitsch — Che Guevara, the hammer and sickle, the Palestinian flag, signs denouncing Islamophobia, etc. The police moved them back a bit but did not ask them again to disperse, and allowed the Pax Europa event to begin.

It was an incredible din. We had loudspeakers that appeared to be able to reach the considerable crowd behind the protesters, but the Antifa thugs did all they could to drown us out: the drums got louder, the vuvuzelas came out, they were blowing whistles, and of course they were screaming and yelling. They also started throwing things: bottles, ice eggs, excrement and more. One bottle narrowly missed the Coptic activist’s head and crashed onto the stage — other bottles crashed at our feet. Several speakers were hit with eggs. The manure they threw was all over the stage floor.

It was like looking into the pit of hell. Here were young people passionately committed to their cause and believing it to be that of justice and freedom, and they are eager and willing useful idiots for the most radically intolerant ideology on the planet. So when my turn came to speak, I addressed them, and told them just that. I told them they wouldn’t like what happened to them when their friends took power, but by then it would be too late for them.

The menace continued. Antifa burned the truck belonging to the company that set up the stage for Pax Europa’s Thursday rally. Friday night they found out the hotel that the courageous anti-jihad politician René Stadtkewitz was planning to stay in when he came to Stuttgart to announce the founding of the local branch of his new Freedom Party; they reportedly broke the hotel’s windows and painted threatening messages on its walls. Also yesterday, I spoke to a Pax Europa meeting at a location in Stuttgart; Antifa thugs found out the location after the meeting had ended, and stormed and surrounded the place. Thirty-six were arrested.

But it is not too late for Europe. I spoke at Stadtkewitz’s Freedom Party event on Sunday, and found a crowd made all the more resolute and determined by the violent intimidation to which they had been subjected. They realize that freedom hangs in the balance today in Germany, and in Europe and the U.S. as well, and they’re prepared to take a stand.

That was a great source of hope. Saturday morning I had the great honor of meeting with Susanne Zeller-Hirzel, one of the last surviving members of the White Rose, the nonviolent resistance movement that worked against Hitler’s regime in Nazi Germany in 1942 and 1943. We discussed numerous parallels between the Nazi era in Germany and the advance of Islamic supremacism today — as we saw in Stuttgart Thursday, Nazis and Islamic supremacists are remarkably similar in their taste for using force to shut down opponents they can’t out-argue.

It’s time for the White Rose to flower again in Germany. And as Islamic supremacism continues to advance in the U.S. also, we are not far behind.

Amil Imani

Contributing Editor

The dictionary defines apartheid as: An official policy of racial segregation promulgated in the Republic of South Africa with a view to promoting and maintaining white ascendancy.

In 1973, the General Assembly of the United Nations opened for signature and ratification the International Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid (ICSPCA). It defined the crime of apartheid as:

“Inhuman acts committed for the purpose of establishing and maintaining domination by one racial [religious] group of persons over any other racial [religious] group of persons and systematically oppressing them.”[Italics are mine]

The declaration prohibits,

“Acts such as murder, infringement on freedom or dignity, arbitrary arrest and imprisonment, imposition of inhumane living conditions, forced labor, or enacting measures calculated to prevent a racial [religious] group from ‘participation in the political, social, economic and cultural life of the country’ such as denying them ‘basic human rights and freedoms, including the right to work, the right to form recognized trade unions, the right to education, the right to leave and to return to their country, the right to a nationality, the right to freedom of movement and residence, the right to freedom of opinion and expression, and the right to freedom of peaceful assembly and association.’”

Islamic member countries of the time, such as Egypt, Iran, Syria, and Saudi Arabia are signatories to the above declaration condemning the barbaric practices of apartheid. Yet, these same countries, as well as other Islamic nations, are the most blatant violators of the declaration.

It is the discriminatory Islamic teachings that condone and even promote wanton practices in violation of the United Nations declaration. Islam is a primitive barbaric ideology for the benefit of the male believer.

Islam, by fiat, discriminates against women. Qur’an 4:11

“Allah directs you in regard of your Children’s (inheritance): to the male, a portion equal to that of two females…. These are settled portions ordained by Allah.”

There are many many more “directives” that for all intents and purposes make women chattel of men. Here are some of the shameful rules and practices of Islamic misogyny.

Tabari IX:113 “Allah permits you to shut them in separate rooms and to beat them, but not severely. If they abstain, they have the right to food and clothing. Treat women well for they are like domestic animals and they possess nothing themselves. Allah has made the enjoyment of their bodies lawful in his Qur’an.”

Tabari I:280 “Allah said, ‘It is My obligation to make Eve bleed once every month as she made this tree bleed. I must also make Eve stupid, although I created her intelligent.’ Because Allah afflicted Eve, all of the women of this world menstruate and are stupid.”

In this case Allah is half right. Women do menstruate. But He is also wrong. Extensive studies by impartial psychologists provide unequivocal documentation of the fact that women are equal in intelligence to men.

But don’t contradict Allah and his beloved unerring mouthpiece, Muhammad. Sadly enough, even many Muslim women prefer to be treated like “domestic animals” who “possess nothing themselves,” and are “stupid.”

Thus, life goes on for the Muslim women with all the trappings of the Islamic misogyny. Here are some rules that keep women in their Muhammad-stipulated place.

· If a Muslim woman is murdered, her beneficiary is entitled to one-half dyyeh—blood money, or compensation—as that of a murdered Muslim male.

· A woman’s testimony in the court of law is worth one-half that of a man.

· A woman must provide four witnesses to substantiate her claim of being raped.

· A man can divorce his wife by simply saying to her, “I divorce you,” three times.

· A divorced woman is entitled to a miserly compensation and automatically forfeits her rights to her children.

· Women are barred from the lucrative and powerful cast of clergy.

· Husbands are entitled to punish their wives corporally.

· Men are allowed to have four wives at any one time and as many concubines as they desire and can afford.

· Saudi Arabia, the custodian of “true Islam” imposes a raft of restrictions on women such as: women are not allowed to drive; they are not permitted to leave the country without accompaniment or explicit permission of their male kin; they are barred from most government jobs and much much more.

· Among other Muslims, such as the Taliban and the Pashtune of Afghanistan-Pakistan region, women are barred from education and not even allowed to leave the house unless accompanied by a male kin.

· Since education, particularly professional education, is often denied to women in many Islamic societies, there is scarcity of women physicians and male doctors are often forbidden to treat women patients.

Such is the plight of women under Islam. There is hardly the need to provide an exhaustive list of Islamic misogyny to qualify it as a shameful, discriminatory and oppressive religious apartheid.

Will Muslim women ever break out of their bondage and claim their rightful place among emancipated non-Muslim women? It is the long sub-humanized Muslim women who must discard Islam and claim their equal human rights. Muslim men will resort to every means to maintain their privileged position and their cruel dominance over women, citing the Quran as justification. Any document that consigns one half of the human race to second class status is null and void.

Its constitutional sub-humanization of women aside, Islam has a raft of beliefs and practices that violate fundamental human rights of non-Muslims in general. A few cases should suffice to fully substantiate the contention that Islam is religious apartheid. And there is no need to draw cases from the repugnant “extremist” Islamic groups such as the Taliban to make the case. Even the most “mainstream” and “peaceful” Islam is guilty of systemic apartheid. Just a couple of examples should suffice for now.

· On December 16, 2006, Egypt’s Highest Administrative Court decreed that in order to receive an Identity Card, only Islam, Judaism, or Christianity must be entered on the application. No one of any other religion or no religion at all is permitted to list his belief or even leave it blank. Without the identity card, just about all the rights of citizenship are denied to minorities such as Baha’is, Hindus, and Buddhists. People are forced to choose between falsely claiming an approved religion and depriving themselves of just about all rights of citizenship such as jobs, education and medical care.

· In the Islamic Republic of Iran, the Islamic law denies dyyeh to any and all people who are not Muslims or members of the only other three recognized religions. Every one of the 500,000 members of the Baha’i Faith can be murdered without the family receiving justice or compensation. As a matter of fact, the Islamic government itself has executed Baha’is for the sole “crime” of being Baha’is and has demanded that the innocently murdered person’s family reimburse it for the bullets they used to execute him.

· The Islamic Republic of Iran’s President’s repeated threat to wipe out Israel from the map is ignored by some as an empty rhetoric of an unhinged fanatic. Yet, Ahmadinejad’s threats are far from the baseless saber-rattling of a zealot. Ahamadinejad’s government has recently ordered the comprehensive gathering of data regarding the Baha’is and all their activities. This order is deeply troubling, since it is almost a replica of what another fascist, Hitler, did before launching the genocide of six million Jews and some four million other “undesirables”. Ahamadinejad is an Islamofascist whose aim is to have a practice run on the Iranian Baha’is before embarking on destroying the Jews and other “undesirables,” following in the footsteps of the German fuehrer.

Islamic societies shamelessly practice all the sanctioned injustices listed in the U.N. charter on apartheid (see paragraphs 2 and 3, above). Islam is religious apartheid. And apartheid, by universal agreement, is an inhumane, unjust and condemned practice.

Islam cruelly practices its oppressive dogma on minorities in its lands; it is in clear violation of the provisions of Universal Human Rights. Ominously, Islam is encroaching in the traditionally non-Islamic parts of the world and doing all it can to impose its horrid doctrine on others.

It is for this present and imminent danger that the free people of the world must rise and do all they can to preserve their birthright of liberty. Muslims in the non-Islamic lands may seem harmless, and many of them indeed are harmless. Yet, Islam compels its leaders to uphold and promote its tenets at any and all costs to anyone. It is for this reason that on the one hand the Islamic governments sign the U.N. Charter that condemns apartheid, and on the other hand, these governments violate every provision of it when they are in power.

Islamofascism, the enemy of liberty, is inside the gate. It is the duty of every free human to defend freedom by defeating the enemy.

FamilySecurityMatters.org Contributing Editor Amil Imani is an Iranian-born American citizen and a pro-democracy activist residing in the United States of America. Imani is a columnist, literary translator, novelist and essayist who has been writing and speaking out for the struggling people of his native land, Iran. He maintains a website at www.amilimani.com. Amil Imani is the author of the smashing book Obama Meets Ahmadinejad.

My feminist generation believed in universal human rights — one standard for all. I still do. Therefore, I have taken a strong stand against the persecution of immigrant women and dissidents. I now submit affidavits on behalf of women who have fled the threat of such killings and who are seeking asylum in the United States.

Those of us who condemn the plight of such women, who are mainly Muslims and ex-Muslims, have been demonized in activist circles as “Islamophobes” and racists because we do not, in the same breath, blame America, the West or Israel for their suffering. Many Western academic feminists are so afraid of being condemned as “racists” that this fear trumps their concern for women’s rights in the Arab and Muslim world.

Islamic gender apartheid, which has penetrated the West, is characterized by normalized daughter- and wife-battering, forced veiling, female genital mutilation, polygamy, purdah (the segregation or sequestration of women), arranged marriage, child marriage and first-cousin marriage. Girls and women often are honour-murdered if they resist such practices, if they wish to divorce a dangerously abusive husband, or if they are viewed as too independent, too modern.

Today, at its most extreme, Islamic gender apartheid is characterized by acid attacks, public stonings, hangings, and beheading of women in Iran, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Somalia and Saudi Arabia — countries in which female rape victims are jailed, tortured and executed.

Feminists should be crying out from the rooftops against these practices. Some are. I am. Yet, many Muslims, as well as many intellectually “progressive” Western infidels, are not. They are welcoming the imposition of Islamic religious law, Sharia law, not only in the Middle East but also in the West.

I have published two academic studies and nearly 100 articles about honour killings, both in the West and in the Islamic world. An honour killing is a collaborative conspiracy carried out against one victim, usually a young girl, by her parents, brothers, uncles, grandfathers, sisters and male cousins. Her relatives believe that her “impure” behaviour has shamed and dishonored them.

An honour killing is not the same as a Western domestically violent femicide. Many honourable feminists disagree with me on this point. They believe that honour killings belong in the same category as Western domestic violence. Understandably, such feminists fear singling out one group for behaviour that may be common to all groups. But if, for reasons of “political correctness,” we fail to properly understand a crime, we will never be able to prevent or to prosecute it.

I began writing about honour killings in the West in 2004. My first study about such killings appeared in 2009 in Middle East Quarterly, the second appeared there in 2010. I studied 230 victims who were honour-murdered on five continents over a 20-year period.

These killings are carefully planned by the victim’s own family of origin, who have warned her, repeatedly, from childhood on, that they will kill her if she dishonours her family in any way. World-wide, women are honour-murdered based on mere rumoors of inappropriate behaviour, for wanting to choose their own husbands, for having infidel friends, for choosing a non-Muslim husband — or a non-Muslim god.

It is rare for a domestically violent Western father to routinely batter, stalk, patrol and murder his own daughter, and to be assisted in this gruesome task by his entire family. In the West, the majority (91%) of honour killings are Muslim-on-Muslim crimes. While Hindus and Sikhs do honour murder, they do so mostly in India, not in the New World.

Honour killings also are distinguished by their barbaric ferocity. The female victim often is gang-raped, then burned alive, stoned or beaten to death, cut at the throat, decapitated, stabbed numerous times, suffocated slowly, etc. This may resemble what Western serial killers do to prostitutes.

In the West, child-murderers, wife batterers and wife-killers are now (courtesy of second-wave feminism), seen as criminals. Yet those who commit or assist in the commission of honour killings view such killings as heroic, and even as the fulfillment of a tribal or religious obligation.

Based on my research, I have increasingly been asked to submit affidavits on behalf of girls and women who have fled being honour killed and who are seeking asylum in the United States or Canada.

My first case was that of an abused Muslim-American teenage immigrant who had secretly converted to Christianity. This was a high-profile case. Lawyers in Florida (she fled there), and in Ohio (her home state), both won her the right to remain in foster care and helped her obtain a green card. The girl now lives in hiding, apart from her family, somewhere in America.

My second case concerns a North African woman who has fled a small European country to seek asylum in America. Just because a Muslim woman lives in Europe does not mean that she lives in a Western environment. Her large, tight-knit, violent, Islamist family inhabits a parallel universe. As a convert to Christianity, this woman’s family will hunt her down until they find and kill her. They will never stop trying.

My third case concerns a brilliant graduate student from a prominent family in a southeast Asian country. She has applied for asylum here. What is her crime? She dared to marry a man whom she loved but who belonged to a different sect of Islam; she did so against her parents’ wishes.

My fourth case concerns a woman who was born and raised in the killing fields of Congo. After her father was murdered, her mother fled to a neighboring African country, where she married a Muslim man who insisted on marrying his new stepdaughter off as the fifth wife to an elderly Muslim man; in turn, her chosen husband insisted that she be genitally mutilated.

Desperate, defiant, this brave soul fled Africa and arrived in the United States with falsified documents. Without going into too much detail, let me say that she has languished in jail in Buffalo, NY for more than three months. Recently, a judge ordered that she be deported to Congo. She has six weeks to appeal this decision.

Just as we have shelters for battered Orthodox Jewish women, shelters for battered Muslim girls and women should be established, and multilingual staff appropriately trained in the facts surrounding honor killings. Young Muslim girls are frequently lured back home by their mothers. When a shelter resident receives such a phone call, the staff must immediately go on high alert.

Perhaps the equivalent of a federal witness protection program for the intended targets of honour killings should be created. England has already established just such a program.

We must issue clear government warnings to all immigrants to the West: Honour killings and female genital mutilation will be prosecuted under Western law. Since honour killings are collaborations, conspiracies, both the perpetrators and accomplices will all be prosecuted. European courts have recently begun to do all this. Unlike the United States, they have a large Muslim immigrant population.

The battle for women’s rights is central to the battle for Western values. It is a necessary part of true democracy, along with freedom of religion, tolerance for homosexuals and freedom of dissent. Here, then, is exactly where the greatest battle of the 21st century is joined.

Phyllis Chesler, Ph.D is an Emerita Professor of Psychology and Women’s Studies at City University of New York. She is an author, psychotherapist and an expert courtroom witness. A longer version of this article originally appeared on FoxNews.com.

Dark side of the Dubai dream

By Lila Allen
Panorama

It is a place in the sun for over a million of us who holiday there every year. It boasts a host of luxury apartments that has celebrities flocking. But behind the glitz and glamour of Dubai often lies a murky world of exploitation and an immigrant work force living on the breadline.

Hit by the credit crunch, Dubai’s economy has taken a turn for the worse reliant as it is on tourism, financial services and real estate. For those labouring to make the Dubai dream a reality, building the homes for the rich and famous, are facing greater pressures than ever.

Ben Anderson investigates the working conditions for some construction workers

But despite the slump, the pressure on would-be buyers is still healthy. A Panorama reporter posing as a potential buyer and kitted out with a secret camera, met with a company endorsed by celebrities. Footballer Michael Owen is a paid ambassador along with England cricketer Freddie Flintoff and golfer Sam Torrance.

A sales representatives from The First Group said now was a great time to buy property. She also allayed any concerns about the wellbeing of the company’s construction workers.

Offering a purchase that would see a £438,000 apartment rise to £1.33m in just 10 years, the sales reps also said they believed the workers were happy to be there.

“It’s much more difficult to earn some money in Pakistan or India, so people actually save by living for free in proper housing, eating for free in the canteen, using the transport and sending something to their families,” she said.

It is the promise of a land of opportunity that has brought an estimated one million migrant workers to Dubai. Most come from areas of extreme poverty in the Indian sub-continent where they are easy prey for recruitment agents. Paying up to £2,000 to make the trip, the sum often has to be borrowed or family land sold in the belief that within 18 months the debt can be repaid.

30p overtime

Instead on arriving in Dubai they are met with shanty town conditions hidden from public view. In a country that penalises journalists reporting stories which negatively reflect the economy or insult the government with massive fines and even imprisonment, it was important to maintain a low profile.

Ambassadors for a development: Freddie Flintoff and Michael Owen

In secret, we followed a group of workers home from work. Employed by The First Group’s sub-contractors United Engineering Construction, they were working on a development due to be finished in June ready for England striker Michael Owen to move in.

Back at the worker’s camp we were soon rumbled and asked to leave. Returning over the next few days we managed to speak to some of the men living there on condition of anonymity.

They told a grim tale. None had been paid the money they were promised by the recruitment agencies, and many said they couldn’t afford to eat properly, living on a diet of potatoes, lentils and bread. Average salaries are often no more than £120 a month. This for a six-day week, often working up to 12-hour shifts. One company paid approximately 30p an hour for overtime.

UNEC said that its minimum basic salary and overtime rate were significantly higher and that employees only worked 12 hour days in exceptional circumstances. It said its workers were fully aware of their proposed terms of employment before travelling to Dubai and that it “wholly disapproved” of workers paying recruitment agents. It said it only recruited through one agency in India, but the workers we spoke to came from elsewhere.

The First Group said its own checks had confirmed that the pay and conditions at the camp were legal.

One of Dubai’s biggest new developments is The Jumeirah Golf Estates, which will host the climax of the European Golf championship in November. The main developer is Leisurecorp, which also owns the championship golf course at Turnberry in Scotland, and has a stake in Troon.

Jumeirah Golf Estates has attracted an incredible array of celebrities who are named as ambassadors on its website, including TV chef Jamie Oliver and golfers Greg Norman, Vijay Singh and Sergio Garcia.

Camp overcrowding

Once again we followed workers back to their accommodation. This time they were employed by one of Dubai’s biggest construction firms Arabtec, to work on a part of the development that had been sold to a sub-developer, but the picture was familiar.

After an hour-long journey back to their gated and guarded labour camp, the men agreed to speak to us if their identities were kept secret.

“The latrines are so filthy we cannot use them, we are so disgusted. The roads are full of garbage and waterlogged. Living and moving about here is a great problem. We suffer greatly,” one of the workers told us.

We decided to find out for ourselves.

Armed with a secret camera we sneaked into the camp to be met with the smell of raw sewage. Sewage had leaked out all over the camp, and workers had to create a network of stepping stones to cross it and get back to their accommodation blocks. One toilet block had no water supply and the latrines were filled with piles of raw faeces.

Documents obtained by us showed that a month previous to our visit, the Dubai authorities described the sewage situation at the site as critical. Arabtec had been fined 10,000 dirhams, approximately £2,000, for allowing sewage to overflow into workers’ accommodation.

Downturn

The authorities also reported that the camp was overcrowded with 7,500 labourers sharing 1,248 rooms with poor ventilation.

But with the downturn in the economy, the workers feel less able to complain as the consequences are graver.

“They are telling, now that you have come, you stay and work. If we find any mistake in your work then finish – back to Bangladesh. We will no longer keep you,” one Arabtec worker told us.

Earning just £140 a month for a six day week, he hasn’t told his family at home about the reality of his situation.

“We have not told them because if we do, our wives and our children will start crying, so we have told them we are doing well.”

The Dubai Municipal government said regular inspections are carried out of migrant workers’ living conditions and fines levied for substandard housing.

Arabtec said it did not accept that there were unsanitary conditions at any of its camps’ toilets. It blamed the workers, saying, despite training, their “standards of cleanliness and hygiene are not up to your or our standards” and that the toilet block we had filmed in may have been a block that was meant to be closed.

It now says it is concerned about the situation, and despite originally blaming the problems on a nearby sewage plant, admitted sewage in the camp was a constant problem it was battling to resolve. They said the camp was a temporary one and all workers will be moved out in eight months.

It said that its wage levels were the Dubai norm and the basic working week was 48 hours and overtime was paid for any hours over that.

In a statement to Panorama, Jamie Oliver Enterprises said they were disturbed by the issues raised: “When we started work with our partner in Dubai, we were informed of their strict contractual guidelines which are in place with sub-developers to protect the rights of migrant workers and provide for good living and working conditions. While we are satisfied that the sub-contractors employed directly by our partner to work on Jamie Oliver projects meet the regulatory requirements and are fair, we have been given further assurances that the claims made by employees working on a sub-developer’s project will be investigated.”

Panorama has also been told that Jamie Oliver now wants to come up with more accurate wording to describe his business relationship with Jumeirah Golf Estates.

In the meantime, the celebrity chef’s name has been removed from the list of ambassadors on the company’s website.

Here a selection of comments:

I’ve lived in Dubai and now live in Doha and the situation is really depressing. All the workers are so low paid, the construction workers get the worst of it but cab drivers, shop and restaurant workers and service people get a bad deal too. I’ve spoken to many who were tricked into coming to the Middle East and are now trapped due to visa regulations and sponsorship laws (as well as not being able to afford a flight home). Businesses here totally take advantage, yet everything costs about the same as in the West – how does that add up?Jill, Doha, Qatar

I totally agree, being an expat here in Dubai for the past three years, I must say I agree completely. Dubai is a brilliant place for the rich but the poor have very little to reap from it. The poverty gap in Dubai is massive, and I myself am quite disgusted in how the public treat the low pay workers. For instance, there are security guards constantly asking the labourers to leave the public beach when it is crowded by tourists. I find this totally unacceptable as a public beach should be accessible to all.

The bottom line is, I find that Dubai is so concerned about creating this “fairy-tale” image and you will find this place to be very materialistic and pretentious- don’t get me wrong, a bit of bling in a city is fun – but when it is at the expense of others it gets ugly.Sue , Dubai, UAE

Facts and figures are worse than highlighted in the story. It’s not only Dubai, but the same story is everywhere in the country. It is good for the BBC to highlight such things, local media can not highlight these issues.Naveen Kumar, Dubai UAE

A friend of mine recently returned from Dubai having quit her job there in disgust at the way that the poorer immigrant workers were treated. According to her, it is not only the big corporations who exploit said workforce: the expat Britpack is not without criticism, employing such workers as servants for the most meagre of pittances- wage slavery by any other name. The Brits there even have a derogatory quasi-racist nickname for these immigrants: they call them “Yik-Yaks”, and treat them with contempt and disdain.Simon, Southampton

Having lived and worked in Dubai, everyone out there knows that Dubai is built on the modern day equivalent of slave labour. It is not a secret, is not hidden, and anyone who tells you different is lying. Whether you choose to ignore it or not is up to you, but do not pretend not to be complicit, when their poor wages subsidise your lavish lifestyle, gas guzzling car, swimming pool, school fees etc etc Hopefully now with the recession even the Brits are realising it is no longer the safe haven cash-cow that they think they are entitled to, by luck of birth.Anon, Glasgow

I have been a frequent recent visitor to Dubai and to Sharjah. There are certainly the conditions you describe. Further, there is also the issue of the “servant class” – mainly made up of young girls where some of the stories and experiences can be shocking. Important too is the fact that similar conditions/experiences also exist in their home countries. However, I have seen examples in Sharjah of companies having a very different attitude to their workers. Accommodation camps with proper amenities, the provision of computing and internet facilities, medical care and more. There the workers (mainly South Asian) are able to keep in touch with family, get paid visits to return home and are treated in a humane way including better salaries than are available elsewhere.Pol , London

For those who keep denying this problem.

Für diejenigen, die behaupten, dieses Problem gebe es nicht.

In study, half of D.C. cab drivers pass by blind people with guide dogs

In a study by a civil rights watchdog group, taxi drivers in the District often drove past blind people who were trying to hail a cab while accompanied by guide dogs.

The Equal Rights Center, in a report released Wednesday morning, said that it conducted 30 tests this year and that in half of them, drivers passed someone with a guide dog to pick up a person who did not have a guide dog. In three of the cases in which the taxi stopped for the blind person, the driver attempted to impose a surcharge for transporting the dog, the Equal Rights Center said….

[…]

“The law is in place,” said Ashley N. White, outreach manager for the Equal Rights Center, “but no one is really enforcing it.”…